Samples and Interpolations
Trivia
- “Without Me” was released as the album’s lead single, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the charts in over ten countries, including the UK, Germany, Greece, and Australia.
- The song’s core instrumental was written in under an hour during a late-night session in the summer of 2001: Around 2:30 a.m., Eminem looped a simple drum track recorded by while experimented with keyboard textures. Bass eventually landed on a bass effect that caught Eminem’s ear; after hearing two notes he liked, Bass began repeating them over the beat. After a few bars, Eminem hummed an improvised melody. Bass then picked up a saxophone and played the melody, and by 3:00 a.m., the track’s foundation was complete.
- Eminem later revisited the iconic segment, interpolating it for both his 2004 single “Just Lose It” and his 2024 hit “Houdini.” The latter also borrowed numerous elements from the “Without Me” music video, serving as a direct sequel.
- In June 2024, the song experienced a 309% increase in sales following the release of “Houdini.“ By October that year, the song surpassed ”Lose Yourself“ to become Eminem’s most-streamed song on Spotify, with over 2.9 billion streams as of 2026.
- The song has spent over 200 weeks on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, more than any other track in Eminem’s catalog.
- In the summer of 2002, Drunkenmunky released a dance instrumental titled “E,” which sampled the song’s saxophone riff. It went on to hit the top ten in several European countries.
Words from Jeff Bass and Eminem
“We were just fooling around. Now I hear it on cell phones, or I hear 30,000 kids going, “Da da-da da-da / Da da-da da-da,” at his concerts, and it blows me away.
““Nobody wants to see Marshall no more. They want Shady. I’m chopped liver.” I regret saying that in “Without Me,” because I’m not chopped liver. When you get famous, fans expect you to act a certain way. I felt like I had to be Shady all the time. It wasn’t frustrating-I like being Shady. But I still wanted to talk about the issue in the song.
When I made fun of Chris Kirkpatrick and Lynne Cheney, it wasn’t genuine anger, I don’t think. It was entertainment. Even though The Eminem Show was my third album, I still felt like an underground emcee. I struggled with that: what can I say to keep my integrity as a respected emcee? Because I could say anything back in the day at The Hip Hop Shop. Nobody cared. Then you become somebody and all ears are on you.
“Last year at the Grammys, [Moby] was running his fucking mouth. He doesn’t know me, so he should shut the fuck up. Nobody likes you, Moby, shut the fuck up. It got to the point last year where every TV show I saw, someone was asking his opinion of me. Who is this fucking guy to give his fucking opinion of me in the first place? What the fuck do you do? You know how people know you? You did a song with Gwen Stefani.